I had Labor Day off and thought it would be a good time to celebrate my 850th golf course! I played a lot of golf earlier this summer while in the Pacific Northwest so I wasn’t looking to break the bank, but still wanted to enjoy an upscale course.

I’ve been curious about Winstar Golf Club since I moved to Texas and thought this would be a good time for a round here. Winstar Golf Club is associated with Winstar World Casino and Resort. I didn’t bother gambling this time with the COVID-19 thing but I’d like to get back and spend some cash in the casino one day!

There are two courses at Winstar, Redbud and Scissortail, and I booked a round on Redbud ($50). The way tee times work here is that a single can only book with another twosome (which is fine) so that limited the available times for me. Scissortail didn’t have any twilight spots for singles while Redbud did, so that is how I ended up playing Redbud.

I booked a 3:20pm time but showed up early and had no trouble getting out by myself! In fact, I basically had the course to myself and played quickly, in about three hours. A slow threesome let me through on the 12th hole which was great. They clearly were enjoying the afternoon more than I was, if you know what I mean – lots of beers in their group!

Both courses at Winstar are designed by D.A. Weibring and Steve Wolfard with Scissortail opening in 2006 and Redbud in 2017. Redbud was my first experience with their work and they seem to have designed a playable resort course. Redbud is one of those courses that won’t beat you up and should be a good experience for the casual golfer.

I played the blue tees which are 72.1/120/6679 and Redbud is a place you can go low. The course has gigantic fairways, the largest fairways I’ve golfed on in quite some time. Redbud has a links look to it and there is trouble on only a handful of holes. Five holes have water in play, but that water can be avoided fairly easily.

As a golfer who is struggling with my swing these days I enjoyed being able to slice it around Redbud and scramble my way to a respectable score. While the course is a nice change from most tough-as-nails modern designs, it felt borderline bland and likely won’t “wow” you. There are some good par-3’s but besides those holes, I didn’t find much memorable about Redbud due to the flat and treeless land. If you click through the pictures I’m sure you’ll see what I mean.

Out of all the holes at Redbud I enjoyed the back nine par-3’s the most. The 14th is a 149 yard par-3 with a waste area and a pine tree just in front of the tees. Those features seemed to frame the hole well. The 18th is the other par-3 on the back nine and I always enjoy ending with a par-3. There is water to the left but you can still make a par if missing right.

When it comes to the conditions I didn’t catch Redbud at a great time. I’ll give things a pass though as I’ve read many complimentary comments about the maintenance. The greens have another week or two left to recover from aeration. As a result, putts were slow and bumped a lot. The fairways looked to have been plugged recently as well and were quite scruffy with all the recent rainfall.

I’m happy to have checked out Redbud and as long as you don’t expect a stunning piece of design work I think you’ll enjoy the day. I’ll add that from what I could see of Scissortail it looked to be more dramatic and I look forward to a future round there to compare the two courses.

Course Pictures (click any picture to scroll through the gallery):